Thus Indians could take their mathematical concepts to an abstract plane and with the aid of a simple numerical notation devise a rudimentary algebra as against the Greeks or the ancient Egyptians who due to their concern with the immediate measurement of physical objects remained confined to Mensuration and Geometry.

For instance, as E the Roman system of numeration, the number thirty would have to be written as X: while as per the decimal system it would 30, further the number thirty three would be XXXIII as per the Roman system, would be 33 as per the decimal system.

It was from this translation of an Indian text on Mathematics that the Arab mathematicians perfected the decimal system and gave the world its current system of enumeration which we call the Arab numerals, which are originally Indiannumerals.

Arabic numerals, known formally as Hindu-Arabicnumerals, and also known as Indiannumerals, Hindu numerals, Western Arabic numerals, European numerals, or Western numerals, are the most common symbolic representation of numbers around the world.

The numerals arose in India between 400 BCE and 400 CE.

The first mentions of the numerals in the West are found in the Codex Vigilanus of 976 [2].

In particular his account of Indian astronomy and mathematics is a valuable contribution to the study of the history of Indian science.

One is that the numerals came from an alphabet in a similar way to the Greek numerals which were the initial letters of the names of the numbers.

We now turn to the second aspect of the Indian number system which we want to examine in this article, namely the fact that it was a place-value system with the numerals standing for different values depending on their position relative to the other numerals.

Indian mathematicians invented negative numbers: the British mathematician Lancelot Hogben, grudgingly acknowledging this, suggested ungraciously that "perhaps because the Hindus were in debt more often than not, it occurred to them that it would also be useful to have a number which represent the amount of money one owes".

Indian theories about the atom are greatly abstract and enmeshed in philosophy as they were based on logic and not on personal experience or experimentation.

Though Indians could have had borrowed the idea of smelting metals from an outside source, they seem to have had used metals in warfare from around 1500 BCE when the Aryans are said to have invaded the Indus Valley cities.

Indian steel and iron were reportedly being used by the Romans for manufacturing armor as well as cutlery.

A particularly important development in the history of Indian science that was to have a profound impact on all mathematical treatises that followed was the pioneering work by Panini (6th C BC) in the field of Sanskrit grammar and linguistics.

Between the 7th C and the 11th C, Indiannumerals developed into their modern form, and along with the symbols denoting various mathematical functions (such as plus, minus, square root etc) eventually became the foundation stones of modern mathematical notation.

Records of the Indian origin of many proofs, concepts and formulations were obscured in the later centuries, but the enormous contributions of Indian mathematics was generously acknowledged by several important Arabic and Persian scholars, especially in Spain.

The Arab scholar Mohammed Ibn Jubair al Battani studied Indian use of ratios from Retha Ganita and introduced them among the Arab scholars like Al Khwarazmi, Washiya and Abe Mashar who incorporated the newly acquired knowledge of algebra and other branches of Indian mathema into the Arab ideas about the subject.

Apart from being a numeral, it is also a concept, and a fundamental one at that.

In the earlier Roman and Babylonian systems of numeration, a large number of chara acters were required to denote higher numerals.

The traditional Indian cosmology states that the universe undergoes cyclic periods of birth, development and decay, lasting 4.32×109 years, each of these periods is called a Kalpa or ``day of Brahma''.

With Devanagarinumerals, the 1 was rotated by 90 degrees and had developed a serif-like loop at the top.

The careers of many Indian politicians, especially those in the ruling party, were built on the wave of hysteria that accompanied the demolition.

The two modern numerical glyphs we use to represent the values of zero and one are: for "zero" a closed curve or circle, and for "one" a straight, vertical line segment.

From a much later date than other Indiannumerals, the inscription containing the earliest true zero known thus far has been identified in India and, delightfully, concerns the dedication to a temple of both flowers and the land upon which flowers may be grown in the future.

Curiously, the direction for writing and reading numerals changed in the conventions of both languages: soon enough in the West the sequence increased in value reading left-to-right, the same way in which numerals are written in modern Arabic even though the letters and words in the language continue to be written and read from right-to-left.

These symbol sets can be divided into three main families: the West Arabic numerals used in the Maghreb and in Europe, the Eastern Arabic numerals used in Egypt and the Middle East, and the Indiannumerals used in India.

These Brahminumerals are the ancestors of the Hindu-Arabic glyphs 1 to 9, but they were not used as a positional system with a zero, and there were rather separate numerals for each of the tens (10, 20, 30, etc.).

This book presented by the Indian scholar was probably Brahmasphutasiddhanta (The Opening of the Universe) which was written in 628(Ifrah) [3] by the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta.

Jewish women now wear bindis, the small marks in the middle of their foreheads that at one time signified a woman's marital status but are now merely a fashion statement.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of the Indian Jewish experience is the complete absence of discrimination by a host majority.

In addition, the Paradesi houses 10 paintings which depict the history of the Jews of Kerala, as well as the 1,600-year-old copper plates-deposited in an iron box called a pandeal and carefully guarded by the elders-which are shown to visitors on request.

It is enacted in clause of Article 343 of the Constitution that 'the form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indiannumerals'.

So far as the Union Government numerals in the pub- is concerned, there should be a uniform lications of the di- basic policy depending on the public fferent Ministries intended to be addressed as to the use depending on the pu- of Devanagarinumerals in addition to blication.

As suggested by the Committee, a uniform basic policy should be adopted for the use of Devanagarinumerals, in addition to the international numerals, in the Hindi publications of the Central Ministries depending upon the public intended to be addressed and the subject-matter of the publication.

Indians began using zero both as a number in the place-value system of numerals as well as to denote an empty place (place holder).

The Indiannumeral system and its place value, decimal system of enumeration came to the attention of the Arabs in the seventh or eighth century, and served as the basis for the well known advancement in Arab mathematics, represented by figures such as al-Khwarizmi.

The Europeans were at first resistant to this system, being attached to the far less logical Romannumeral system (notably the Romans never propounded the idea of zero), but their eventual adoption of this system arguably led to the scientific revolution that began to sweep Europe beginning by the middle of the second millennium.

Further, it has been said that the introduction of zero, or sunya as the Indians called it, in an operational sense as a definite part of a number system, marks one of the most important developments in the entire history of mathematics.

After 700 C.E. another notation, called by the name "Indiannumerals," which is said to have evolved from the brahminumerals, assumed common usage, spreading to Arabia and from there around the world.

Medieval Indian mathematicians, such as Brahmagupta (seventh century), Mahavira (ninth century), and Bhaskara (twelfth century), made several discoveries which in Europe were not known until the Renaissance or later.

www.gosai.com /chaitanya/saranagati/html/math/math_4.html (544 words)

Islamic History in Arabia and Middle East(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)

The system of numeration employed throughout the greater part of the world today was probably developed in India, but because it was the Arabs who transmitted this system to the West the numerals it uses have come to be called Arabic.

The Indian contribution was to substitute a single sign (in this case meaning "3" and meaning "2") indicating the number of signs in each cluster of similar signs.

If the origin of this new method was Indian, it is not at all certain that the original shapes of the Arabic numerals also were Indian.

The essential basis of Indian culture is Religion in the widest and most general sense of the world.

However, because Indian philosophic thought was considerably more mature and found particular favor amongst intellectuals, the traditions persists that any early scientific contribution came solely from the West, Greece in particular.

Because of this erroneous belief, which is perpetuated by a wide variety of scholars, it is necessary to briefly examine the history of Indian scientific thought.

Sulvasutras but research into the history of Indian mathematics has shown that the essentials of this geometry were older being contained in the altar constructions described in the Vedic mythology text the Shatapatha Brahmana and the Taittiriya Samhita.

It should be noted that the Indians have an extremely subtle intelligence, and when it comes to arithmetic, geometry and other such advanced disciplines, other ideas must make way for theirs.

The astonishing progress that the Indians had made in mathematics is now well known and it is recognized that the foundations of modern arithmatic and algebra were laid long ago in India.

The clumsy method of using a counting frame and the use of Roman and such like numerals had long retarded progress when the ten Indiannumerals, including the zero sign, liberated the human mind from these restrictions and threw a flood of light on the behaviour of numbers.

An inflexible numeration so to crude as to make progress well nigh impossible, and a calcuting device so limited in scope that even elementary calculations called for the services of an expert....

www.mumbai-central.com /nukkad/oct2001/msg00176.html (668 words)

Wikinfo | Roman numerals(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)

The system of Romannumerals is a numeral system originating in ancient Rome.

Unicode has a number of characters specifically designated as Romannumerals, most of them only included for compatibility with East Asian standards.

Images, some of which are used under the doctrine of Fair use or used with permission, may not be available.

www.wikinfo.org /wiki.php?title=Roman_numerals (594 words)

NationMaster - Statistics on India. 2126 facts and figures, stats and information on Indian economy, crime, people, ...(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)

“Indian is the biggest democracy in the world”...sorry but i don’t see any credit to that,...or do you think you are a better country for having a democracy of 1000 million people instead of 5 miilion people.

Indian traditions and cultures in punjabi, bengali, marathi and tamil are as different as english, french, chinese and arabic.

If Indian democracy is not successful then how do all of them agree on scintific and economic developments which has frightened westerns so much that they do not want to compete with indians now.

There, when I had been introduced to the art of the Indians' nine symbols through remarkable teaching, knowledge of the art very soon pleased me above all else and I came to understand it, for whatever was studied by the art in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily and Provence, in all its various forms.

In his travels Fibonacci learned a great deal of mathematics, including the Indiannumerals, and also a great many of the Greek classics which had been lost to the west, but whose Latin translations had been preserved in the east through the long endurance of the Roman empire in Constantinople [1, p607].